After dabbling in everything from health care to music, Dan Gonzalez found himself at the pinnacle of the test prep industry, an industry he never had considered. But then realized that what industry it was didn't matter; the work did. Find out the difference between "following your passion" and "following your purpose."
Guest Dan Gonzalez, Dartmouth '96, left college most concerned with keeping his options open. In the pursuit of breadth, he dabbled in everything from health care consulting and after-school drama programs for kids, and even considered med school. But then he heeded the oft-proffered advice to "follow your passion," realized music-making had been a source of earlier joy, and enrolled in a song-writing program at Berklee College of Music.
To make ends meet, he had been tutoring at a test prep company and got hooked into an industry he'd never considered through the power of one uniquely-run company. It ended up changing the way he thought about passion, purpose, and the value of finding work that feeds you.
In this episode, find out from Dan the difference between "following your passion" and "following your purpose…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley
About This Episode's Guest
Dan Gonzalez is co-founder (with his wife Anne Jones, Dartmouth '97) of District C, a not-for-profit that empowers schools and teachers to teach high school students how to collaborate with diverse peers to solve real-world business problems. Find out more about their process at https://www.districtc.co.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Dan Gonzalez: I just started to get more involved with this company and had these like self-doubts at times like a career in test prep. That's not what I had dreamed up for myself, but that ended up being a life changing kind of professional experience that has impacted everything else that I've done since then.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: After dabbling in everything from health care to music, Dan Gonzalez found himself at the pinnacle of an industy he never had considered. But then realized that what industry it was didn't matter. On this encore presentation of our first ever Roads Taken episode, find out the difference between "following your passion" and "following your purpose"...on today's ROADS TAKEN...With me, Leslie Jennings Rowley
So I'm here today with my friend, Dan Gonzalez and it's been ages since I've spoken with him and he has traveled many different pathways. And today we're going to talk about that, beginning with things having to do with music in the Boston area, to now living in North Carolina in the field of education.
So welcome Dan.
DG: Thanks Leslie, awesome to be here with you. Great to see you. Thanks for including me.
LJR: Yeah. So I always try to start this with the idea of who as a 22 year old leaving college, did you think you were?
DG: And this may be a little embarrassing to say, but I think upon graduating from college, I was maybe the least convinced about who I was than at any other point in my life. You know, through high school and into early years of Dartmouth, I had assumed I was gonna be an engineer. You know, I had planned to go to grad school and engineering and it wasn't until just before senior year that I thought, wait, that that's narrowing my path, not expanding it. And that feels pretty scary. So I think that maybe the closest I can get to defining who I was is someone who was like, anxious about closing things off rather than, and was looking for opportunities to like open up paths and explore maybe things I hadn't thought of in the past. So that's who I was leaving. That didn't really help me get a job. I'll tell you that much.
LJR: Right. So you found yourself in the Boston area, right? Right after college.
DG: Yes.
LJR: And what were the various ways that you were finding to expand your horizons?
DG: Geez. Well, I worked at a hospital for a few months. I then moved back to my hometown of Cleveland and I worked as like an entry-level analyst at a healthcare consulting company for a year. Meanwhile, I was like thinking I was going to apply to medical school. I had, previous to that, gone through a couple of interviews for an investment banking job. So you, I mean, you can hear like they're totally scattered, right? So those initial years after Dartmouth, I was doing a number of different things.
I ended up as a high school physics teacher for a couple of years. I worked for a youth programs group as part of a theater company in Boston for a year. So just a bunch of random things. And again, like all of the commitments I was making were really. Short term, like, I didn't really do anything for more than a year at a time.
And I think that's where, you know, that anxiety around like getting, getting too narrowed was playing out. That's how it was manifesting. But, you know, in terms of like how much money I was making that, that wasn't helping me out in terms of building on my salary or, or like building any career expertise, it was just a bunch of random experiences. I wouldn't trade them, but Yeah, that's what I was doing.
LJR: So was there a moment where you thought, okay, maybe I'm going to try a different path and maybe narrowing is gonna work out for me or was there just a different kind of epiphany you had, you know?
LJR: Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think what I was trying to do was figure out what I was passionate about. And of course you hear this a lot, you know, advice to younger people is find your passion and then pursue that. And I was kind of confused because there was nothing that was like screaming out at me like, wow, this is really a passion of mine. So I kinda went back to things you know, prior in my life, that were really engaging for me. And I had loved doing music in high school. I did music and college and thought, okay, well, you know, that, that clearly must be my passion. You know, that's something I had done for a long period of time. It makes me happy. So I decided, I guess this was 2001, to go to music school in Boston at Berkelee College of Music. So it was there for two years. I was studying songwriting and playing, you know, learning to be a better guitarist. And I thought, okay, like, this is my passion. Like I, this is, this is what I love. This must be what I'm meant to do. And then you know, after a couple of years at Berkelee started to like pursue a career in music. And when I got to that point, and realized how hard that is, it's kind of a naive thing, not to realize prior to doing it, but it's really hard. And it kind of dawned on me like, this is maybe not my passion. Like, you know, I should be, I had peers that were trying to do the same thing who like lived, breathed and slept music. Like all they did was play their instrument and write songs and go to open mics until one in the mornings to try to get their new song out there. And I just was not motivated to do that stuff. And so I kind of thought I had it. And then. No, it wasn't, it wasn't working for me. So it wasn't until I kind of had this epiphany after that.
So I was doing some tutoring, some test prep, tutoring to make money while I was pursuing this music stuff. And in 2005, I landed at this company called Manhattan GMAT. It was a Manhattan-based company that prepares people to take the GMAT exam for business school. It was the most unique experience I've ever had in a professional setting that the founder of the company was phenomenal, extremely motivating, engaging, inspiring person. He ran the company in a way that was really, really highly motivating and engaging for the employees. And I just started to get more involved with this company and had these like self doubts at times, like, Hm. A career in test prep. That's not what I had dreamed up for myself, but that ended up being a life changing kind of professional experience that has impacted everything else that I've done since then, I would not have expected that.
LJR: So, how did that come about? You were trying to make a go of the Boston music scene. You had these kind of inklings that maybe the passion wasn't really meant to play out in this way for you. How do you get from there to the test prep?
DG: The test prep company is called Manhattan GMAT. They were looking for an instructor in the Boston area. So I had found this ad on Craigslist. And the ad kind of caught my attention because it said a hundred dollars per hour instructor for the GMAT. And I had been tutoring for some other companies prior to that, I was making 30, 35 bucks an hour and thought, wow, this is too good to be true. I submitted a resume. They called me back five minutes later, which you know, is just another one of these small signs like this, this company was really different. Right? Went through a literally a six month interview process.
LJR: Five minutes to six months.
DG: Not because they were like slow walking, but because that was the level of rigor that they were using to hire their instructors. So the whole premise of the company was we have the best instructors in the business. We pay them four times. The industry standard of the instructors at Manhattan GMAT were the highest paid people in the company. More than the CEO, more than the senior leadership. It's this really unique philosophy about how to run a business. And so the interview process was. You know, submit a resume, have a phone interview, go down to New York, teach an actual GMAT class in front of the CEO of the company. I got hired. There was a hundred hour training process, but I wasn't officially a part of the team until I completed that training, completed a two hour final assessment, I taught my first class and then received a certain level of rating from the students that I had taught. So that whole process took like six months. It was really fascinating to have like a front row seat to how this company operated. This is a small boutique test prep company that would later become the biggest GMAT prep company in the country got acquired by Kaplan.
And so being a part of a startup and being, you know, one of the, I was probably the 20th or 30th employee at the startup. It was a really fascinating right. And what I discovered—and this was, this was the whole key for me—is that I was too preoccupied prior to that with kind of what job I would have or what industry I would be in and not enough kind of focused on: What is the day-to-day work? Who are the people that you work with and what is the purpose for that work? Right. So I ended up in the test prep industry, which I never would have imagined. I ended up as a test prep instructor, and then later it kind of grew into various roles in the company, which I never would have imagined, not an industry or a job I would have chosen for myself. But this company was fascinating. Showing up every day and working shoulder to shoulder with people who had the same level of commitment to the organization and the same kind of clarity of purpose. Like really the culture was about creating truly exceptional experiences for the students that were our customers and becoming the best test prep company for the GMAT in the country.
It was really about that day-to-day work. And that's when I realized Huh I should be following…That I should be like, not spending time looking for my passion or looking for the job that I thought I would have, but what is the day-to-day purpose? When I wake up in the morning and I go to this place, is it motivating for me as it is? Is it driving me to do something bigger than myself and a. So it really kind of an unlikely place to find that. ‘Cause test prep is really in many cases, like the backwater of the education industry, but this place was truly remarkable and changed the way that I thought about my career.
LJR: And I think it changed the way you thought about education, right.
DG: Yeah.
LJR: Or opportunities in education. How do you then make the jump from an established company to launching your own entrepreneurial venture?
DG: Yeah. So coming out of that role, decided with my wife, who's a 97 from Dartmouth, Ann Jones. She's also in education. We decided to start a nonprofit called District C. And really that the premise is, you know, through our teaching backgrounds and through you know, many years working in the education industry, we kind of just you know, recognize there's this huge gap between the things that we teach our students to know and do in traditional school and what employers actually need them to know and do in the modern workplace. And that gap is growning as artificial intelligence, automation and computers, robots, you name it. I like quickly changing the labor market. So there's a great quote from the outgoing CEO of IBM, Jenny Romany. She said, I expect artificial intelligence to change 100% of jobs in the next five to 10 years. And what this leaves for us humans, the uniquely human job description of the future is can you work in a diverse team to solve a complex problem, right? The computers and robots will gradually take over more and more of the rote stuff. The procedural stuff that we typically learn how to do in school, right? Following procedures, 10 steps to finish your chemistry lab, whatever it might be. That that stuff will be taken by automation, artificial intelligence. What will be left for humans? Can you work in a diverse team to solve complex problems, novel problems. So we founded this organization, District C, with a focus on, you know, can we create learning experiences for students that prepare them to do just that? So we started the organization back in early 2017. We just finished our third year and yeah, we're trying to grow it, trying to get access to more and more students.
LJR: And so tell me a little bit about starting a venture with one's life partner, who I guess you live with, work with you live and breathe all this stuff with how, how do you balance that?
DG: Yeah. Important from the start, I think we both realized it was important from the start that we were clear about like the division of labor. So. I think we had a hunch that our professional tendencies skills defaults were complimentary and not in conflict. And in that first year, I think we kind of prove that out. So Anne is very much a, the way we like to talk about it as she she's like, she's a person who likes to be out in the wilderness, hacking through the brush, creating a path, trying to make sense of the unknown, the uncertainty, trying to figure things out. I'm much more about like taking stuff, organizing it, cleaning it up, polishing it. And so any kind of new thing that we start to do as it relates to district C and. This nonprofit that we're running, she usually goes out first and comes back with like a rough piece of clay and then throws it over the fence. And then I will like chisel that clay into a sculpture. Right? So that's kind of how we orient that first part gives her energy. The second part gives me energy. And so anything that has to do with like operations. Organizing something building a process or something I will do. She will tend to do more of the like, okay, here's a new opportunity. How do we start thinking about how to pursue that opportunity? So we're really complimentary in that way. Of course we support each other on both sides. I think if we were competing for either one of those two spaces, our lives would be a lot more difficult and we probably would not have made it, you know, three plus years so far that we.
LJR: Yeah, but now you are at that kind of crucial point where you're thinking, okay, what kind of growth is the next phase going to lead us to? So there will be a lot of that brush cutting and seeking new paths, right? How do you kind of extract yourself from that really hard thinking phase and actually go have a life that might…do you have a life that isn't this baby that you've put together?
DG: Yeah, I think we're pretty good about, there are certain activities that we do outside of the house or outside I've worked with that are kind of exclusively non-work activities. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves, okay, let's not…We need to talk about this for work purposes, but let's defer that until Monday. So yeah, we're pretty good about separating. It's not, it's not always easy, but especially when you're trying to build this organization, that requires a lot more attention than maybe a typical nine to five job because things go wrong and things don't go as expected and things are uncertain. And so it requires a lot of time and thinking and figuring things out, but we wouldn't do it if we didn't love it. So it's been a labor of love.
LJR: That's awesome. So now when you look at where you are and what you've achieved in building this organization and thinking about what potential next steps are, are you looking at this as the culmination of having found that narrow niche, that really feels good to you, or it's just emblematic of another thing in the broadening life of Dan Gonzalez.
DG: Yeah. Thanks for circling back to this. Cause this was a point I wanted to come back to so that the test prep experience of Manhattan GMAT, I think really again, made me realize that what I care most about and the things that I want to be involved with are things where there is shared purpose and shared commitment to like really high quality execution, high quality work, high quality thinking. And the fact that back then it was, it happened to be in testing. In the test prep industry, like to me, I didn't care about the test or the test questions or yeah, of course I cared how our customers did and our students did, but it was less about the content and more about the pursuit. And I think in this case for District C, you know, what really drives me. Of course, I believe deeply in solving this problem of preparing the next generation of talent, but the real passion that I have for this is I want to wake up every day and work with others to build something that's truly exceptional. And you know, whether it is in this kind of realm of preparing next generation of talent or starting a school or selling widgets or whatever it is…like, what really drives me is how do we build an exceptional organization that will sustain itself, that will be motivating and inspiring for the people that work there, be motivating and inspiring for the stakeholders who intersect with the organization? It's that pursuit. And I think again like that came from this learning back then. It's not about the job or the industry. It's about the purpose that comes from like working on building a really inspiring organization. And it's a ton of work left to kind of get there. But that's what kind of drives me on a day to day basis. I don't know if that makes sense.
LJR: It makes perfect sense. And I'm just sitting here wondering, had you been the 22 year old leaving college and just happened to find yourself in a place where the mission was important and people were showing shared commitment for excellence and all of those things
would that have been enough to be like, oh, aha. This is the kind of thing I need to be doing. Or did you need all of those disparate experiences that were like fine, but not checking it off
to be bowled over the head when you actually found it?
DG: I don't think I wasn't ready at that age, at that time to kind of make that realization. Obviously I wasn't cause I didn't make it, but I think what I would kind of tell my younger self. Now is again, focus, focus last on the job in the industry and focus more on the work. And I think there's a big difference between the job and the work. The work I think of as the day to day, like, you know, what is your level of engagement, motivation et cetera for doing something meaningful. And I think at that time I was just too focused on alright, okay, I’ve gone to school. I need to like, create some return on that investment. It's about money. It's about job. It's about, you know, the four or five categories of work that were like known to me at the time. Like, okay, everyone seems to be, they're going to med school or going to investment banking or consulting, you know? And so it was very job in like industry focused and not enough, like purpose-focused or work-focused.
LJR: And then there's that muddying concept of passion. Like we should all find our passion and then go after it. And sometimes if it isn't intrinsically linked to those core things of, I just need to be excellent. You know, you were finding that you were good, but you didn't have that drive to be excellent in this passion. It was just something that fed you and fed your soul in a certain way. I think we get sold that kind of bum rap of like passion is end all and be all for some people, if they're really lucky and they get the whole package, but
DG: Yeah. Totally. I totally agree. And I think of course you and I both know a lot of people who have gone into those fields that I mentioned and had a path and have had a clear passion for them. You know, my good friends is a doctor and is passionate about it and knew that passion from before he entered college. Right. And I was always envious of that in people, right. I wanted to like have that, that passion for a job or for a career path and just never felt that. So I guess if I wish back then I would have just invested in the work because I do think you can find the purpose or the drive for like doing something meaningful and excellent in any job that you have. Right. So it's kind of job or industry agnostic. That purpose comes from you, not from the job or from the industry. And so as I think about my early jobs, I was just kinda like treading water and trying to get to the next thing that I hope to like, get like fulfillment giving that passion. But I wish I would have just slowed down, taking the time to figure out, okay, how do I find the purpose that I need in this job? Right? I just wasn't, I don't think I was in a place to recognize that that was what I needed to be doing. If that makes sense.
LJR: Well I appreciate your sharing your path with us. I wish you and Anne and District C great success in the future, or have it evolve in a way that puts you on a path for something else great and mission-driven, and soul affirming for you. It's just really great to reconnect.
DG: Yeah. Thanks Leslie. Again, appreciate you inviting me. Good luck with the series. It's a really cool idea. Thanks for doing it.
LJR: That was Dan Gonzalez. Co-founder of district C a not-for-profit that empower schools and teachers to teach high school students how to collaborate with diverse peers to solve real-world business problems. Find out more about their process at DistrictC.co. And find me Leslie Jennings Rowley at RoadsTakenShow.com or wherever you find your podcasts with another friend on another episode of Roads Taken.